That's nice, Ali. Thank you.
Mairead
On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, ALI ALIZADEH wrote:
> Dear Mairead
>
> I have no idea why my reply to this message hasn't got through...I sent it yesterday.
> Well, I'll try to remember what I said about Plath's 'Three Women' and I'll write it
> again soon...
>
> Ali
>
>
> ---- Original Message ----
> From: Mairead Byrne
> Date: Tue 2/20/01 2:11
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Broken Epics
>
> Dear Ali,
>
> I am writing about what I call "broken epics" -- the long poems about
> childbirth of Sylvia Plath ("Three Women"), Alicia Ostriker ("The
> Mother/Child Papers"), and Toi Derricotte ("Natural Birth"). Secular
> poetry about childbirth only achieved articulation in the English
> language tradition in the twentieth century. The most common form of
> such poems, especially in the late twentieth century, is lyric -- a form
> I call the magnificat (as there is no established term comparable to
> "elegy"). But these great long ambitious poems by Plath, Ostriker, and
> Derricotte are a bridge to making the subject of childbirth heroic
> (something Sharon Olds manages to do in a short poem, "The Language of the
> Brag"). Your project sounds wonderful, and I don't know if you are
> interested in incorporating engagements with the
> epic by women poets in terms of definitively female quests. I think the
> epic is "broken" at this point in time because of the confusion about God
> -- a confusion which has, happily, allowed the woman writer space.
> Good luck with your valuable work,
> Mairead
>
> On Mon, 19 Feb 2001 [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > > In times when the only way for a younger poet to make an impact
> > >has been getting fairly short poems published in highly intellectual (read:
> > >anti-mythical) journals, am I deluded to be investing my energies into a
> > >work which can only be published as a dismembered body in a variety of
> > >potentially hostile journals before seeing the light of the day as an
> > >entire volume? And is there a way out of this maze?
> >
> > Ali - if an epic is what demands to be written, then write it.
> > Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.
> >
> > I'd hesitate to call Nightmarkets an "epic" - surely much more
> > novelistic. Also Monkey's Mask and so on. I don't know what you'd call
> > John Scott's work; some of it has much more in common with classical
> > _lyric_. I used to say the epic was a dead form, which seemed to be
> > confirmed by the yawn lines of poems like Omeros.
> >
> > But then I read a couple of poems. Fredy Neptune is most definitely an
> > epic poem, and I liked it immensely, thinking of it as a kind of Iliad,
> > though it by no means adheres to any formula, and Alice Notley's The
> > Descent of Alette, which draws richly from the Comedy and the myth of
> > Inanna, among many other things, and is "set" in the subways of NY. And
> > which is the first poem I've read which I wholeheartedly wished I had
> > written myself.
> >
> > So I had to eat my words.
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Alison
> >
>
